The 135-foot-tall spires that form the distinctive backdrop of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland were each painstakingly created by artisans from hand-crafted rock work designed to evoke the fossilized look and feel of a petrified forest.

Disney Imagineers have designed, built, sculpted and painted the rockwork spires over the past three years in the 14-acre Star Wars themed land taking shape at the Anaheim theme park.

A towering black spire at the center of a remote outer rim spaceport lends its name to the Black Spire Outpost village, the setting for the new Galaxy’s Edge lands coming to Disneyland and Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida.

The Matterhorn Bobsleds and Thunder Mountain is seen rising above the tree line as work continues on Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland in Anaheim, CA, on Thursday, August 16, 2018. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Work continues on the spires high above Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland in Anaheim, CA, on Thursday, August 16, 2018. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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This fanciful artist’s conception of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge shows the Millennium Falcon, a three-winged Lambda-class Imperial shuttle and TIE Fighters in the skies over the new themed land. In the real world, Disney has launched a war of sorts with competing Southern California theme parks. (Courtesy of Disney Parks)

This fanciful artist’s conception of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge shows the Millennium Falcon, a three-winged Lambda-class Imperial shuttle and TIE Fighters in the skies over the new themed land. In the real world, Disney has launched a war of sorts with competing Southern California theme parks. (Courtesy of Disney Parks)

This fanciful artist’s conception of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge shows the Millennium Falcon, a three-winged Lambda-class Imperial shuttle and TIE Fighters in the skies over the new themed land. In the real world, Disney has launched a war of sorts with competing Southern California theme parks. (Courtesy of Disney Parks)

This fanciful artist’s conception of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge shows the Millennium Falcon, a three-winged Lambda-class Imperial shuttle and TIE Fighters in the skies over the new themed land. In the real world, Disney has launched a war of sorts with competing Southern California theme parks. (Courtesy of Disney Parks)

This fanciful artist’s conception of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge shows the Millennium Falcon, a three-winged Lambda-class Imperial shuttle and TIE Fighters in the skies over the new themed land. In the real world, Disney has launched a war of sorts with competing Southern California theme parks. (Courtesy of Disney Parks)

This fanciful artist’s conception of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge shows the Millennium Falcon, a three-winged Lambda-class Imperial shuttle and TIE Fighters in the skies over the new themed land. In the real world, Disney has launched a war of sorts with competing Southern California theme parks. (Courtesy of Disney Parks)

Imagineers wanted to create a historic, exotic and iconic look for the new land that felt instantly recognizable as Star Wars yet still relatable, familiar and approachable on a human and emotional level.

“What is that graphic symbol that says this is Star Wars?” Lucasfilm vice president and creative director Doug Chiang asked. “For us, it was the spires.”

The Galaxy’s Edge spires were inspired by the Petrified Forest National Park in northeastern Arizona near the New Mexico border. Imagineers exaggerated the scale of the petrified trees and turned the frozen forest into a planet-wide ecosystem.

“When you do that what happens is that you’re creating something that’s very fresh that is easily identifiable as Star Wars,” Chiang said. “It also makes it very real.”

The Matterhorn Bobsleds and Thunder Mountain is seen rising above the tree line as work continues on Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland in Anaheim, CA, on Thursday, August 16, 2018. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Work continues on the spires high above Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland in Anaheim, CA, on Thursday, August 16, 2018. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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This fanciful artist’s conception of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge shows the Millennium Falcon, a three-winged Lambda-class Imperial shuttle and TIE Fighters in the skies over the new themed land. In the real world, Disney has launched a war of sorts with competing Southern California theme parks. (Courtesy of Disney Parks)

This fanciful artist’s conception of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge shows the Millennium Falcon, a three-winged Lambda-class Imperial shuttle and TIE Fighters in the skies over the new themed land. In the real world, Disney has launched a war of sorts with competing Southern California theme parks. (Courtesy of Disney Parks)

This fanciful artist’s conception of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge shows the Millennium Falcon, a three-winged Lambda-class Imperial shuttle and TIE Fighters in the skies over the new themed land. In the real world, Disney has launched a war of sorts with competing Southern California theme parks. (Courtesy of Disney Parks)

This fanciful artist’s conception of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge shows the Millennium Falcon, a three-winged Lambda-class Imperial shuttle and TIE Fighters in the skies over the new themed land. In the real world, Disney has launched a war of sorts with competing Southern California theme parks. (Courtesy of Disney Parks)

This fanciful artist’s conception of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge shows the Millennium Falcon, a three-winged Lambda-class Imperial shuttle and TIE Fighters in the skies over the new themed land. In the real world, Disney has launched a war of sorts with competing Southern California theme parks. (Courtesy of Disney Parks)

This fanciful artist’s conception of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge shows the Millennium Falcon, a three-winged Lambda-class Imperial shuttle and TIE Fighters in the skies over the new themed land. In the real world, Disney has launched a war of sorts with competing Southern California theme parks. (Courtesy of Disney Parks)

“There is a mystery to it and we kind of like that idea that there is no answer to it,” Walt Disney Imagineering managing story editor Margaret Kerrison said. “There is something unusual about it. There’s talk and whispers among the locals about why that thing is blacker than all the rest.”

A team of artisans were working on the Black Spire during a recent tour of the Galaxy’s Edge construction site at Disneyland. Scaffolding surrounded the spire, ringing the soaring artificial tree like a steel exoskeleton. Paint crews worked their way from the top to the bottom of the Black Spire, adding details to make the towering rockwork seem more realistic.

“This is one of the last spires that were finishing up within the land,” Imagineering executive creative director Chris Beatty said. “We’re getting to see the end of the process.”

The final step will be to plant a living tree at the base of the faux ossified fossil — juxtaposing life and death.

“There’s sort of a little bit of a moment of rebirth that’s happening in this land that’s sort of dead,” Beatty said. “The trees have been forgotten about. This one’s starting to regrow.”

The design process for the 13-story spires begins with a hand-made scale model that fits atop a desk.

“We start with these small little models that we do out of clay,” Beatty said. “Then we move to foam and we build them a little bit bigger. We finally go to a fairly substantial size model that is maybe 18 inches in height.”

The 1/100th scale model is then imported into a computer software program.

“We scan that model,” Beatty said. “When we’re done, we digitize it and take it full scale into the 3D world”.

The 3D model generates a computer-formulated design that breaks the spire into bent rebar “chips.”

“That model is cut into little six-foot by six-foot squares,” Beatty said. “Our rebar is bent off of that model.”

The jigsaw puzzle-like rebar squares are then welded to a steel superstructure that forms the raw shape of the sky-scraping spires. Artisans carve the rockwork by hand and painters bring the spires to life with highlights and shadowing.

“There is no real roadmap,” Beatty said. “This truly is an incredible experience.”

Brady MacDonald is a theme park reporter for the Orange County Register and the Southern California News Group. He’s covered the theme park industry for more than 25 years. He writes about Disney, Universal, Six Flags, SeaWorld, Cedar Fair and Legoland parks in Southern California, across the United States and around the world. As a member of the SCNG Features team, he also writes about entertainment, travel, pop culture, music, restaurants and craft beer.

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